Good Food is Everybody's Business
Milk, eggs, fruits and vegetables – those are all the basics of life; and yet the ups and downs of the economy over the last several years have been especially hard on the small to mid-sized farmer. Local, organic dairies are especially hard-pressed to make a go of it; milk has a shelf-life measured in days and to get it on the shelves and sold quickly is tough, even in the best of times.
Rising global food prices has pushed an estimated 44 million more people into extreme poverty in developing countries over the past eight months, the World Bank reports. The poverty-fighting institution said its food price index increased by 15 per cent between October, 2010, and January, 2011, and is just 3 per cent below its 2008 peak during the last food price crisis.
Serving both developed and developing countries, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger. The FAO has tracked food prices since 1990. As prices continue to rise on most of the indexes, we are approaching or exceeding the food prices that triggered riots in 2008.
Told in Timmermeister’s plainspoken voice, Growing a Farmer details with honesty the initial stumbles and subsequent realities he had to face in his quest to establish a profitable farm for himself. Personal yet practical, Growing a Farmer includes the specifics of making cheese, raising cows, and slaughtering pigs, and it will recast entirely the way we think about our relationship to the food we consume.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is responsible for “truth in advertising” and charged the Dannon Company with making claims that could not be substantiated; claims that allegedly exaggerated the health benefits of its Activia yogurt and DanActive dairy drink. Dannon has agreed to change those claims.
